Some comments on the paper "On the Effects of External Sensory Input on Time Dilation" by Albert Einstein

8/2/2019 Some comments on the paper "On the Effects of External Sensory Input on Time Dilation" by Albert Einstein

1/8

a r X i v : 1 2 0 3 . 6 7 7 3 v 1 [ p h y s i c s . p o p - p h ] 3 0 M a r 2 0 1 2 Some comments on the paper On the Effects

of External Sensory Input on Time Dilationby Albert Einstein

Z. K. SilagadzeBudker Institute of Nuclear Physics SB RAS and

Novosibirsk State University, 630 090, Novosibirsk, Russia

Abstract

Einsteins famous 1938 experiment to test relativity of time isplagued by too many ambiguities and does not prove anything. Nev-ertheless, it is a landmark experiment at the foundation of the moderntheory of time perception.

1 Introduction

Relativity of time, which is at the heart of many special relativistic paradoxes,is difficult to understand. First, we all are brainwashed by Newton [1] atour schooldays. Besides, to learn relativity requires a time and effort, and alayman usually lacks both of them. The active person lives in the world of phenomena and with it. He does not require logical proofs, indeed he oftencannot understand them [ 2]. Why should we try to change such state of affairs and enforce active persons to understand a bit of modern physics? Thereason is simple. Irrationality and ignorance is spreading and proliferatingworldwide, and such a situation is very alarming because a stupid person is

more dangerous than a bandit [3].But how can we explain relativity of time to a layman? Einstein himself gave an excellent explanation: when a man sits with a pretty girl for anhour, it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute andits longer than any hour [ 4].

1
http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.6773v1


2/8

As a genuine physicist, Einstein performed an experiment to prove this

assertion. Unfortunately, he was a theoretician, not experimenter and hisexperiment is plagued by many uncertainties which impede us to draw theabove given intuitively appealing conclusion from the experimental data.

2 Pretty girl and relativity of time

Einsteins experiment consists of following [4]. He arranged, through CharlieChaplin whom he knew personally, a meeting with Charlies wife PauletteGoddard, the movie star and very pretty woman indeed. When it felt toEinstein as if a minute had passed during the meeting with the radiant and

delightful Miss Goddard at the Grand Central Oyster Bar, he checked hiswatch to discover that actually 57 minutes had ied.Einstein used a chrome waffle iron as a reasonable equivalent of a hot

stove, because the woman who cooked for him had forbidden him to getanywhere near the kitchen. He plugged in the waffle iron and when it heatedup he sat on it dressed. He jumped up in less than a second but it felt tohim as if a good one hour had passed.

At rst sight the experiment is very convincing and conclusive. However,as the old wisdom says the rst impression is often misleading.

3 Subjectivity in science is dangerousAlthough the notion of a hot stove is quite well-dened, we cannot say thisabout the notion of a pretty girl which is too subjective. And subjectivity inscience is dangerous, as the following story with me does conrm.

I was curious were it the beauty which caused the time dilation effector the proximity of a women and decided to check whether a picture of abeautiful woman can lead to the same phenomenon, thanks God old mastersleft a lot of drawings of beautiful women. I didnt have to go far to nd aproper picture. At the home page of the Southern Cross Review [5], an on-line magazine where I had found the Einstein paper, there is the picture Girl with Guitar by Anders Zorn who was one of Swedens foremost artists. Thegirl is quite pretty, albeit naked. There was nobody nearby, except my wife,to ask whether she was beautiful enough to exclude subjectivity. So I calledher and asked her opinion. And lo, this cost me a black eye and the laptop

2


3/8

broken to pieces.

4 Further problems with the experiment

Einstein gave not enough evidence that the pretty girl effect is a real effectand not just an illusion. For example, if you sit on a hot stove in the presenceof a pretty girl, the effect evaporates instantly, so does sometimes the arrivalof her husband. It is a grave omission for Einstein not to investigate theseeffects and clarify the ambiguity.

Neither did he revealed the secret of beauty. Although his fellow scientiststried hard (see Fig. 1), this quest for the secret of beauty is still not nished.

Most misteriously, the beauty can emerge in quite unexpected for scientistsway, even from their most beloved thing, a sphere (see Fig .2).There is some empirical evidence that the pretty girl effect can change

sign after you marry her. That is after years of marital life you can feel likesitting on a hot stove in the presence of your beautiful wife. This is reallyvery strange phenomenon, more strange than the constancy of light velocityin different inertial frames. I doubt you can explain it.

Einstein mentions this mysterious sign change neither in the paper [ 4]nor in his other writings, although it is quite clear that this effect and theambiguities mentioned above do undermine completely his explanation of the time dilation.

Neither does Einstein investigate (theoretically or experimentally) thepossible inuence of a beautiful girl on quantum vacuum, alleged effect whichcan be of signicant intensity and even dangerous. Namely, it was suggested[6] that the presence of a young woman can alter the vacuum polarizationnearby thus decreasing the molecular bond strengths which by itself canlead to a spontaneous combustion of materials. Leaving aside a danger of spontaneous combustion of a male experimenter, like the notorious case of the mysterious death of Krook described by Charles Dickens in Bleak house[7], particularly disturbing, as far as the Einstein experiment is concerned, isthe fact that this effect can mimic a hot stove and thus blur the time dilation

effect.

3


4/8

5 Einstein and the perception of time

As we see, Einsteins famous experiment is not without aws. Nevertheless,whatever do you think, Einstein is a great man, the man of tomorrow, if you want to know - while relative time became the de-facto view in physics,the relativity of psychological time is still a matter for debate [ 8]. However,despite this debate, everyone agrees (see, for example [8, 9]) that Einsteinsgroundbreaking experiment initiated the interesting eld of research. Thisresearch is far from being completed. Although time is a concept thatattracted and occupied the thoughts of a countless number of thinkers andscholars over centuries, its true nature still remains wrapped in a shroud of mystery [10].

6 Concluding remarks

There is some ongoing mystery surrounding the Einsteins experiment. Al-though Einsteins pretty girl - hot stove explanation of the time dilation effectis well documented (he gave it to his secretary, Helen Dukas [11]), nobodyhave ever seen the Journal of Exothermic Science and Technology with Ein-steins article in it, except Steve Mirsky who reproduced this article in [ 12].So we are forced to repeat Maxim Gorkys famous question: was there aboy at all? [13].

Despite all our respect for Steve Mirsky, we think what we have hereis an example of unsettled past. It is a common erroneous belief that thepast is always xed in every detail. As was conjectured in [14, 15], it mayhappen that the past is actually only partly xed. At every moment of timewe have a template of the past that gets incarnated and xed only under thebackword inuence of ongoing events. By unveiling the Einstein experiment,Mirsky initiated a template. However, whether this template turns into anundeniable truth, depends on you.

Acknowledgments

The work is supported by the Ministry of Education and Science of theRussian Federation.

4


5/8

References

[1] Z. K. Silagadze, Brainwashed by Newton?, arXiv:1103.6281.http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6281

[2] O. Spengler, Pessimism? , in Selected Essays (Henry Regnery Company,Chicago, 1967).

[3] C. M. Cipolla, The basic laws of human stupidity,http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidity.htm

[4] A. Einstein, On the Effects of External Sensory Input on Time Dila-tion, Journal of Exothermic Science and Technology (JEST, Vol.1, No.9;

1938).[5] Southern Cross Review, Number 79, November - December 2011

http://southerncrossreview.org/79/index79.html

[6] P. Brovetto and V. Maxia, Some conjectures about the mechanism of poltergeist phenomenon, NeuroQuantol. 6 , 2 (2008) [arXiv:0801.0382[physics.gen-ph]]. http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0382

[7] Charles Dickens, Bleak House,http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54bh/

[8] C. V. Buhusi and W. H. Meck, Relativity Theory and Time Perception:Single or Multiple Clocks?, PLoS One 4 , E6268 (2009).http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2707607/

[9] S. Glasauer, E. Schneider, R. Grasso and Yu. P. Ivanenko, Space-TimeRelativity in Self-Motion Reproduction, J. Neurophysiol. 97 , 451-461(2007). http://jn.physiology.org/content/97/1/451.full

[10] M. Saniga, Algebraic Geometry: a Tool for Resolving the Enigma of Time? in R. Buccheri, V. Di Gesu and M. Saniga (eds.), Studies on theStructure of Time: From Physics to Psycho(patho)logy (Kluwer Aca-

demic/Plenum Publishers, New York, 2000), pp. 137-166.http://www.ta3.sk/ msaniga/pub/ftp/mathpsych.pdf

[11] F. R. Shapiro and J. Epstein (eds.), The Yale Book of Quotations (YaleUniversity Press, London, 2006), p. 230.

5
http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6281http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6281http://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidity.htmhttp://southerncrossreview.org/79/index79.htmlhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0382http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0382http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54bh/http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2707607/http://jn.physiology.org/content/97/1/451.fullhttp://www.ta3.sk/~msaniga/pub/ftp/mathpsych.pdfhttp://www.ta3.sk/~msaniga/pub/ftp/mathpsych.pdfhttp://www.ta3.sk/~msaniga/pub/ftp/mathpsych.pdfhttp://www.ta3.sk/~msaniga/pub/ftp/mathpsych.pdfhttp://jn.physiology.org/content/97/1/451.fullhttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2707607/http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/d/dickens/charles/d54bh/http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0382http://arxiv.org/abs/0801.0382http://southerncrossreview.org/79/index79.htmlhttp://www.searchlores.org/realicra/basiclawsofhumanstupidity.htmhttp://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6281http://arxiv.org/abs/1103.6281


6/8

[12] S. Mirsky, Einsteins Hot Time, Sci. Am. 287N10 , 102 (2002).

http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/natureslaw/unl2201/src/testingrelativity.pdf [13] Maxim Gorky, Life of Klim Samgin (in Russian)

http://maximgorkiy.narod.ru/SAMGIN/

[14] Z. K. Silagadze, Schrodingers cat versus Darwin, Electron. J. Theor.Phys. 7N24 , 1 (2010) [arXiv:0903.5539 [physics.soc-ph]].http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5539

[15] Z. K. Silagadze, LHC card games: bringing about retrocausality?,arXiv:1003.6130 [physics.gen-ph]. http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.6130

6
http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/natureslaw/unl2201/src/testingrelativity.pdfhttp://maximgorkiy.narod.ru/SAMGIN/http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5539http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5539http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.6130http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.6130http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.6130http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.6130http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5539http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.5539http://maximgorkiy.narod.ru/SAMGIN/http://www.usp.nus.edu.sg/natureslaw/unl2201/src/testingrelativity.pdf


7/8

Figure 1: Quest for the Secret of Beauty by Lado Gudiashvili, 1942.

7


8/8

Figure 2: Galatea of the Spheres by Salvador Dali , 1952.

8

Documents

Some comments on the paper "On the Effects of External Sensory Input on Time Dilation" by Albert Einstein